North Livermore community infested with mice

LIVERMORE, Calif. (KGO) -- In North Livermore, an environmental problem has become a suburban one. A community has so many unwanted rodents, they've started keeping count.

Michele Pearson took a tally of the active mouse traps in her Livermore garage, she counted 13.

This is what happens when the wild and suburbia collide. It's man versus nature and for a while, neighbors say nature was winning.

"My husband has caught more than 50 in our garage," said one neighbor.

"We have caught in the last six weeks, we're at 63," Person said.

On Pearson's telephone she keeps a rogues gallery of the trapped mice, not all of them though.

She started taking pictures four weeks ago, but stopped because there were so many it didn't matter anymore.

According to the Alameda Department of Environmental Health, they came from nearby fields, flushed by early rains in October, a time when there are naturally more of them.

"There was a lot of resources for the mice to build up a population. If we didn't have this rain, they'd probably still be out there in the fields and slowly being picked off by and hawks," said Daniel Wilson of Alameda County Vector Control.